She feels as if mind and body had become separate and apart. Thoughts new and uncalled for come to overwhelm her. Then voices from out of the distance are heard. Words, words come in numbers, half-consciously to her lips, but she hears them as afar off. She sees with closed eyes, and in this inner vision message after message written out before her. Words written upon a scrap of paper and crushed in her hand stand out in bright distinctness before her mental vision. Words in languages other than those she speaks are known to her. She forgets them as soon as uttered. No—hark! “Tell Harry his mother is waiting for him.” Did her lips utter those words? She cannot tell. Words, words, words—where do they come from? She is under control. No power or volition of her own consciousness moves her. Songs, sweet songs, she hears. Does she sing them? Is she out of mortal life or in it? It is over! The world in which she has been living floats away like evanescent smoke in ether-filled space. She awakens to the unfriendly glare of the foot-lights, the restless, garish crowd, the unfeeling world again. Ugh! She shudders. If she could never more waken. Whence comes this pain, this actual pain which racks her? Even that is over at last, and she can arise and escape from it all. How gladly she would shut herself up in her own little room with Dolores again. But it must not be. The five dollars a night for these exhibitions must be earned and laid by for Dolores. She puts on her wraps and enters her carriage to be whirled away to the hotel, her temporary abiding place. What are her thoughts and reflections upon this lonely, homeward ride! “O God, O God!” she is saying; “show me some other way! Am I wrong, wicked to do this? Where does it come from, this power? From Thee or from the shades of darkness? If I only knew! If I only knew! Why did it ever come to me? Why should my life be so differently ordered from that of other and happier women? Can it be I am the same who was once safe and sheltered in the comforts of home? Safe? Did not the serpent enter my Eden—even there? “O God! why did it come? Can this life be real? If I could but waken and find it all a dream.” CHAPTER XV WELCOME GUESTS We will pass over the first few years of Lissa’s pioneer life, only mentioning one or two experiences which, though common to that section of the country, brought terror and anxiety to the heart of our little bright-eyed woman. Again they experienced the sweeping of a prairie fire near them, when Nathan came expecting to find their home in ashes, and another hour when a blizzard drove them terrorstricken to their dug-out, where, during the long night, they listened to the shrieking and pounding of the elements, expecting every moment to have the roof torn from the house.